


My Brother's Blood

by Shaw



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Blood and Gore, Canon Related, Gen, Song fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-26
Updated: 2018-06-26
Packaged: 2019-05-28 23:35:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,006
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15060248
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shaw/pseuds/Shaw
Summary: It's my brother's blood on a cherry treeIt stains the bark from branch to rootIt puddles thick with pits and leavesIt strains the sweetness from the fruit





	My Brother's Blood

**Author's Note:**

> For reference, the paragraphs alternate between pre and post killing. It might be a bit confusing, but that was the vibe I was going for.

“It’s better this way, brother.” The two had sat across from one another, katana between them. It was better this way-- the words echoed in his mind. Hollow was what he was. Hollow. Genji’s eyes stayed glued to the weapon. His face was impassive to anyone who did not know him. Hanzo knew him. Hanzo knew him so well, knew him like the back of his hand, and that may have been what made this so painful. 

 

He was alive, and that was the worst part, Hanzo figured. Alive, despite what he had done. Breath clinging to his body even as his ribboned form bled to death before him. He didn’t want to look anymore, but he was not done. He was not finished. He had to finish what he had started. His stomach lurched within him, throwing itself from his abdomen into his chest and cramping his lungs and heart. Bile burned at the back of his throat. 

 

“Please,” He started. Genji’s mouth was set in that oh, so familiar way it set when he did not want to show something. “It is for your own good.” So they don’t do it themselves, is what he really wanted to say. Die by your own rules-- How you lived. 

 

It took an act of real effort to keep a grip on the sword. He stared down, trying to keep himself from losing his mind. He had to do this. He had to do this. So they wouldn’t. If Genji wouldn’t, he must. Hanzo slowly lifted the sword, ready to drive it down and finish it once and for all. Then Genji looked up. 

 

“You expect me to kill myself.” The fury in Genji’s voice was a knee jerk reaction to cover the betrayal he felt. Hanzo knew this all from the start. Had seen it coming. He didn’t want to fight. Why couldn’t Genji just comply? He had already done the unthinkable, had he not? Already Hanzo extended a hand of kindness towards him in doing this. Why could Genji not see that?

 

His eyes were glassy. Dark blood covered most of his face, obscuring the fact his skin was sickly pale from the amount of blood he was losing. Hanzo tried to ignore the fact he was stepping on his intestines as he stood over him like this. This was not his brother, his mind suddenly made up. His brother was the boy who watched the birds wheel in the sky, who got excited over soft toys and figurines, who came up with gimmicky phrases to make himself laugh when the room was too serious. This thing that lay before him, bottom jaw severed and stump of a tongue twitching acutely… This was not his brother. 

 

“You’re out of your fucking mind, Hanzo! You and all of them! Fuck you! Fuck you!” The venom, it was the venom. The sincerity that had caught Hanzo off guard. Genji did not speak to him this way, ever. Not even when they fought, when they disagreed. Because they were all the other had. Mother and father dead, the whole clan trying to tear them apart. Genji’s teeth were bared, brown eyes glittering with tears unshed as he stood and turned his back to Hanzo. He paced away angrily, hands fisting into his hair as he groaned his frustrations. 

 

Hanzo did not know what happened to him in that moment. What so cleanly split him in two that day. What made him suddenly care so little about the body he had mutilated, the body that had once been his brother but was no more. He toed the torso over, watching the already serrated spine snap easily. One arm hung limply by twine thin strips of tendons and muscle, barely following the motion as the body was turned. 

 

“There’s no other choice, Genji. It’s this or they will take matters into their own hands.” He had tried to reason, voice tight with emotion he couldn’t bring himself to show. He needed to be strong, needed to be the rock, needed to stay calm where Genji could not. His brother did not turn to face him, seemed to be doing something. Ignoring him? No, he had a device in his hands… What was he doing? 

 

It, not he, Hanzo decided, stared up at him still. He suddenly found it no different than staring into the unseeing eyes of a doll, broken and abandoned. Genji, the real Genji, would be okay. He was the sparrow in the tree, singing his heart out as the cherry blossom tree bloomed around him. He was the echo of laughter that would cease to ring in the halls of their home. Hanzo drove the sword down with finality. It stuck next to the thing’s head and stayed there, blade slightly bent from the onslaught. He was finished here. 

 

“You… You really were... How could you.” Hanzo stared at the device in his hand. Careless of Genji to bring it out now. Hanzo recognized the logo, knew immediately that it was all true. Anger bubbled inside of him, rocking against his skin and slowly filling him. Genji said nothing, turning away again. They could not clip his wings, and now he had sunk his talons into the throat of the family. Had endangered everything he knew, for what? Had endangered Hanzo, had endangered their lives, had broken their vow to always stay together no matter what. He stooped to pick up the sword now, unsheathing it.

 

He never went back for the body. Assumed that the others had taken care of it. He never had to look at it again, the gore it had filthied the place with at the end of his blade. The blade he could not pick up. It was not his to weild. Genji used blades, he used his bow. Genji, who would stay inside now and always be the perfect little brother now that there was no trouble to cause.

 

Hanzo took a deep breath and stared at himself in the mirror.

**Author's Note:**

> They don't need to know about my brother's blood.
> 
>  
> 
> Song inspired fic, in My 2018? It's more likely than you think! Just something I've been thinking about lately as to how exactly Hanzo and Genji's cataclysm went down. For reference, the song is My Brother's Blood by Kevin Devine. Very good song...


End file.
